OHARA, Pa.  Tagg Romney, the eldest son of presidential candidate Mitt Romney, announced via Twitter that he and his wife Jen have new twin boys, delivered by a surrogate today.

Happy 2 announce birth of twin boys David Mitt and William Ryder. Big thanks to our surrogate. Life is a miracle, Tagg tweeting, linking to a photo of himself and one of his new sons.

This the second time that Tagg, 42, and his wife, Jen,39, have used a surrogate. The same surrogate was used for the twins carried their youngest son Jonathan, who was born in August of 2010. Their other three children were not born via surrogacy.

Heart transplants and organ donations canot be be equated morally with reproductive concubinage. The “modern” “technical” aspect of surrogacy is not what makes it objectionable. It’s the depersonalization and demaritalization of reproduction -— distorting procreation into being both a comemrcial transaction and a laboratory breeding technique -— that makes it objectionable.

Should we not donate blood and organs because the recipient’s body rejects it, because it is for all intents and purposes, unnatural in the recipient’s body?

Maybe skydiving should be banned because there’s a chance of the plane or parachute failing. Because you know, just because we can jump out of perfectly good airplanes, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea and all...

102
posted on 05/04/2012 3:59:21 PM PDT
by wastedyears
(There can be only one.)

Hey... oldest one of ten .... mother was the oldest one of ten.... she had six sisters....... tell me about having more than one mother...... sheeesh.
Come to think of it there where at least a dozen great aunts also.

The legalization of any procedure or product has to be weighed against both the good it does and the harm it does. I believe another problem with artificial insemination is that extra embryos are created that become frozen or destroyed. This is where the aspect of the cheapening of human life comes into the discussion. Adoption is still a great option that not only helps the parents but an existing unwanted child.

106
posted on 05/04/2012 4:03:07 PM PDT
by JediJones
(From the makers of Romney, Bloomberg/Schwarzenegger 2016. Because the GOP can never go too far left.)

No, there's no hate being spewed. Everybody here KNOWS that to get a viable fertilized egg implanted in the woman's uterus it is likely the Romney kid used the method that creates plenty of otherwise viable fertilized eggs that just get tossed out with the day's garbage.

Now where did he learn those values?

I think it's perfectly fair to examine the parents when it comes to their chillun's belief systems.

It's like Mayor d'Alessandro in Baltimore, a regular old Siciliano Protectore, and he raised his daughter Nancy Pelosi to have what can most charitably be called MOB ETHICS.

Not that there's anything wrong with that ~ in some ways the MOB has the right idea ~ like with loyalty, stealing from within, that sort of thing, but going after the grandfather is one of those opportunity things.

If they want to do this stuff do it when we aren't watching them. Else be prepared for the criticism.

“The modern technical aspect of surrogacy is not what makes it objectionable. Its the depersonalization and demaritalization of reproduction - distorting procreation into being both a comemrcial transaction and a laboratory breeding technique “

But couldn’t that opinion be equally applied to heart transplants?? Placing another person’s heart into a patient could be considered distorting the Creator’s masterpiece! And heart transplants aren’t free, are they??

Old Church of the First Born (not that 19th century invention in Sweden) have a fertility problem and they pass the women around through what is known technically as serial polygamy to give them all a chance at a proven man.

Sometimes they get confused for Jack Mormons but they have a perfectly good base of Christian belief in their Lutheran and Orthodox backgrounds.

Considering they’ve done this twice and had twins both times, the odds are astronomically in favor of them using IVF. Now, who will ask Mitt Romney what happened to all his other preborn grandchildren that were concieved by these procedures? Are they sitting in a freezer somewhere? In a plastic bag in a biohazard dump? Being used for stem cell harvesting? Inquiring minds might like to know.

“Next, youll be saying that only children conceived using the missionary position should be allowed to live. Sheesh.”

That’s ridiculous. There are a great many pro-lifers who are opposed to IVF, because the procedure results in a great many more DEATHS of human beings than lives. This includes the Catholic Church. The opposition has nothing to do with wanting children to die, in fact it is the opposite.

I can understand the pause we all get at the notion of having a baby conceived by and carried to term by a surrogate. It’s not “normal” but the genes in that sperm and egg are carried on by those living children and are as genetically related to the Romneys as their first 3 children are.

It’s not evil and it’s not bad.

Now for sure I do not think that anybody should make the wonderful and perfect non-judgemental Sager have a child by in vitro fertilization, but I should think that he is way out of line in calling for the jailing of people and calling them evil for doing what their conscience deems correct.

“There are a great many pro-lifers who are opposed to IVF, because the procedure results in a great many more DEATHS of human beings than lives.”

I am pro-life, and believe life begins at conception. Ten to 20% of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, the actual number of miscarriages is unknown (thought to be up to 50%) because many pregnancies fail before the mother even knows she is pregnant. If that is the case, should we ban all conceptions because of the deaths that occur?

Some women donate embryos created through IVF for research which is wrong. But proclaiming modern fertility treatments as immoral based on that is wrong.

“So, they did it just to create unnatural babies. Everything is wrong with that.”

Unnatural babies. What does that even mean? What kind of judgement is that? A couple wanting children to the extent that they would go through all this trouble and expense are to be denigrated? What ever happened to judge not lest you be judged?
Does Christ consider them “unnatural babies”?

I am a Christian, but I am not Catholic. I believe that God opens and closes the womb, so no amount of IVF will result in a pregnancy unless God ordains it. I also know that children are a blessing from God (Psalm 127:3). And I believe that you can still respect human life and uphold the dignity of procreation while undergoing infertility treatments.

You sound a bit unhinged yourself. Look, just like I told your buddy, it's your moral code so you learn to live with it. Trying to mop the floor with folks who don't agree with you on what is a life and death issue is hardly gentlemanly or lady like ~ more like unhinged fascist BS if you ask me.

. . . to deny them the use of modern technology is archaic and mean . . .

A paid surrogate is not an example of "modern technology." A paid surrogate is a human being who is commissioned to bear a child that is not her own--or to abort that child if she prefers since she really has no investment in the new baby's life except the fee she receives for her trouble.

The technology is not all that advanced and modern ~ we still don't have the capability to build babies apart from the mother's body. Once we reach that point we can refer to it as a mature technology.

Currently it's a bit brutal, and ethically questionable ~ in many circles.

Surrogacy is like an organ transplant? Reddy, I understand where you're coming from (I think) but bear with me, Im going to try to explain:

(Madprof, you want to listen in? Or add your thoughts?)

Almost any bodily organ (heart, kidney, lung) is part of a system whose function is that it keeps a person alive. Its about survival. And if you can donate a kidney, or blood, or something under ethical conditions (not selling organs, not having an organ confiscated by some Organ Committee, but free gift) to help somebody else survive, well and good.

But the sexual organs have not a personal survival, but a maritally interpersonal meaning. For two reasons: they mean "you and I belong to each other (maritally) in an exclusive manner; and they can generate a new person, which gives sexuality an even deeper interpersonal meaning.

This isn't true of animals. That's why veterinary processes (insemination, cloning, interspecies breeding --- like making mules --- or any other laboratory reproduction technique) are not "depersonalizing" for animals. Not at all. But they would be for humans. It has to do with our identity, which is important to us. Animals don't have an intense personal interest in their "identity" or their "relationships" or a transcendent drive to ask Who am I? Where did I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? or any sense of personal violation. They aren't personally violated no matter how they are bred with each other. They dont give a flip who their mama is or who their daddy is.

It's quite otherwise with humans. One of the main immoral aspects of slavery, for instance, is that it fractured interpersonal relations, separated husbands from wives, separated children from parents, treated persons as if they were some kind of livestock. It broke natural marriage (husband  wife) and natural parenthood (fatherchild and motherchild) to pieces.

OK. Heres the bottom line: Hiring a woman to be a surrogate is that sort of wrongdoing. It treats her not as a whole person, but as a rented uterus. Its as depersonalizing as just renting her vagina (prostitution); it intentionally thing-ifies her so that she is to have no ongoing relation to the child or children she bears; and it makes human procreation a for-hire contract rather than a love til-death-do-you-part two-in-one-flesh union.

Human procreation is an image of God. It is life-giving and love-giving at the same time, and it creates another image of God, a new human. Surrogacy make the child-bearer less than a mother, makes her as hired procreative collaborator less than a wife, and makes the child the end-result of a kind of manufacture, as if he were a product, less than a person.

I'm not saying this detracts from the worth of the child: eery child has a right to life. God bless the child, the children: God belss them forever. I am saying that the child will lack something basic that any child would want and have a natural right to: to be the child of the woman who gave him birth, the fruit of the love-union of his father and mother. He is being deliberately deprived of that.

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